French numbers

Un, deux, trois...

French numbers can be a bit tricky. Just when you think you've got the pattern figured out, the rules suddenly change and you're left thinking, "wait, what?"

So let's start off gently. Even if you've only been studying French half-heartedly until now, you've probably stumbled across a few of the numbers from zero to ten, so these fellas shouldn't come as too much of a shock.

(Make sure you listen to the audio. Often the pronunciation is a bit different from what you'd expect!)

Numbers from 30 - 69

Once you've got that pattern nailed, it's pretty easy to count all the way up to the sixties. Just swap vingt for one of these numbers instead:

30

trente

40

quarante

50

cinquante

60

soixante

Numbers from 70 - 99

Things get a little curlier when you reach 70, where instead of having a word for "70" in itself, you instead say "sixty-ten", as in "sixty plus ten".

70

soixante-dix

And then when you want to say "seventy one" you actually say "sixty eleven", and so on up to 79.

71

soixante et onze

72

soixante-douze

73

soixante-treize

74

soixante-quatorze

75

soixante-quinze

76

soixante-seize

77

soixante-dix-sept

78

soixante-dix-huit

79

soixante-dix-neuf

A little bit strange, right? It gets even stranger. When you get to eighty, instead of having a word for eighty there's a further bit of math involved. French speakers will say quatre-vingts — "four twenties".

80

quatre-vingts

81

quatre-vingt-un

(Note that the "et" is left out from "quatre-vingt-un". Just to mess with you a bit more!)

And then again, when you get to ninety it's similar to what we did earlier with the 70s: You take a eighty and add ten. But now we're adding it on top of those "four twenties", so to say "ninety" you're actually saying four-twenty-ten, four-twenty-eleven, four-twenty-twelve, etc.

90

quatre-vingt-dix

91

quatre-vingt-onze

92

quatre-vingt-douze

And then there were regional differences...

It gets even more confusing if you venture into any other French-speaking countries: In Belgium and Switzerland they use septante (seventy) instead of soixante-dix (sixty-ten) and nonante (ninety) instead of quatre-vingt-dix (four-twenty-ten). In Switzerland (but not in Belgium) they also use huitante for eighty, instead of quatre-vingts.

If these extra options seem too much to remember right now, just stick with the French-French numbers we've discussed. Regardless of which country you visit, these numbers will always be understood, even if they're not conventionally used.

Numbers over 100

Once we get to 100 you can breathe a sigh of relief. Things get a bit more predictable.